Review: Likable 'Oz the Great and Powerful' Is Overstuffed With Digital Wizardry

Disney’s “Oz the Great and Powerful” is a $190-million prequel to the turn-of-the-century L. Frank Baum 14-book series. Directed by Sam Raimi, the film is bloated in length and overstuffed with digital 3-D wizardry, yet somehow manages to be a horse of a pleasing -- if not particularly different -- color.

Disney’s “Oz the Great and Powerful” is a $190-million prequel
to the turn-of-the-century L. Frank Baum 14-book series. Directed by Sam Raimi,
the film is bloated in length and overstuffed with digital 3-D wizardry, yet somehow
manages to be a horse of a pleasing -- if not particularly different -- color.

Oscar Diggs (James Franco) is a womanizing carnival magician
with a Bucky Beaver smile and an ego outsized for the two-bit show he and his
wary assistant (Zach Braff) shill to the Kansas yokels. When a tornado blusters
his hot-air balloon out of the black-and-white prairies and into the
candy-coated CG realm of Oz, Oscar is mistaken for a real wizard capable of
freeing the land’s good people from the Wicked Witch of the West. He
uncomfortably obliges, largely because he can’t turn down a pretty face, this
one belonging to sexy Theodora (Mila Kunis), the Sporty Spice of Oz witches.

"Oz the Great and Powerful"

Theodora has two witch sisters, Evanora (Rachel Weisz), a raven-haired
beauty who guards the Emerald City’s treasure, and Glinda (Michelle Williams),
a character whose benevolence needs no explanation. The three sisters share some
drama. Theodora and Evanora have cast out Glinda, claiming that she
killed their father. It’s not a spoiler to state the obvious: Theodora and
Evanora -- the bitter brunettes! -- prove to be the conniving ones, while
Glinda in all her sleekly swan-feathered glory is simply trying to emancipate
the Ozians from her siblings’ tyrannical rule. She sees Oscar’s shortcomings,
but knows if ever a wiz there was, this wizard will have to
do.

The imaginative simplicity of Baum’s work is largely missing
here, but “Oz the Great and Powerful” does nod to MGM’s 1939 “The Wizard of Oz,”
to the extent that tricky rights legalities allow. Kansas characters reappear
in Oz in different guises, and the costuming of the Winkies (with “Evil Dead”
star Bruce Campbell making his signature Raimi cameo) is an almost exact
homage. Scary forest critters watch Oscar and his friends with psychedelic
night vision, which recalls the warped images in Miss Gulch-turned-Wicked Witch
Margaret Hamilton’s crystal ball. There’s also a confusing hodgepodge of borrowed
references from other fare, including an evil green apple (huh?) and a Munchkin
song-and-dance routine that’s more Oompa Loompa than Oz.

Yet the film has an amiably weird, sort-of soul of its own. The most elegant sequence happens
in China Town, a decimated land made up of broken dishware, where Oscar meets
the fragile if plucky China Girl (Joey King). Her cracked porcelain skin and
limbs which creak like scraped pottery are a marvel of animation, even if the
sentimental message behind the character drags a bit. Another successful addition
is Finley (voiced by Braff), the cute flying monkey who swears allegiance to Oscar.
He isn’t an evil flying monkey (they show up later -- winged gorillas in the
mist), and his jokey demeanor and puppyish face vaguely recall some of the
better animal sidekicks from Disney’s animation renaissance in the early 1990s.

'Oz the Great and Powerful,' Weisz and Kunis

Williams, Kunis and Weisz ably add old-fashioned charisma to a world both beautiful and distractingly artificial.
These ladies have green-screen presence, a useful talent for this filmmaking
age. Williams radiates sweetness and observant care, appropriate for Glinda.
Kunis and Weisz make for a pleasingly bitchy duo, adding flare to their
characters’ Joan Crawford-eseque motivations. (Here the Wicked Witch -- whose
identity I won’t reveal despite it being readily available on IMDb -- is pissed
because Oscar plays her like a fiddle and then throws her over for the more
peaceable Glinda.) When both beauties’ true natures ultimately come shrieking
and roaring through, we see a refreshing hint of Raimi’s “Evil Dead” past. Less
refreshingly, we’re reminded yet again that young/pretty is good and old/ugly is bad.
Sigh.

Meanwhile Franco, like his character, is a letdown that may
fool some people. He’s miscast, and reminds me of a class clown in a high
school play, over-acting while grinning to himself about his most recent
attention-getting stunt. This is truly
where “Oz the Great and Powerful” falters, putting its faith in a hero who,
while genial, lacks the emotional investment of his three leading ladies. It’s
a pity, because this Oz is likable enough to deserve a worthy wizard.

Thompson on Hollywood

Born and raised in Manhattan, Anne Thompson grew up going to the Thalia and The New Yorker and wound up at grad Cinema Studies at NYU. She worked at United Artists and Film Comment before heading west as that magazine's west coast editor. She wrote for the LA Weekly, Sight and Sound, Empire, The New York Times and Entertainment Weekly before serving as West Coast Editor of Premiere. She wrote for The Washington Post, The London Observer, Wired, More, and Vanity Fair, and did staff stints at The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. She eventually took her blog Thompson on Hollywood to Indiewire. She taught film criticism at USC Critical Studies, and continues to host the fall semester of “Sneak Previews” for UCLA Extension.